Channel Surfing—The Big Bang Theory

I’m a big fan of sitcoms—always have been—so I'm glad to see The Big Bang Theory is back for another season. 30 Rock might have cleaned up at the Emmy’s but in my opinion, The Big Bang Theory and The Office are the best-written and best-acted comedy series on television right now.

I’ll confess, though, that I’m a sucker for a show that promises an engaging love story, which may be why 30 Rock has less appeal to me. The Office has several love interests—Jim and Pam finally engaged! The Dwight-Angela-Andy triangle.

And of course The Big Bang Theory has Leonard and Penny. In spite of opening the box to discover Schrödinger's cat survived the experiment, their relationship was short lived. Poor Leonard. Lovable? Totally. Brainy? Yes. Socially inept? Oh, yeah. Pointing out that Penny didn’t even graduate from community college? At least he didn’t mention her weight.

In this week’s episode, enter Leslie Winkler, whose biological clock is wound tighter than the DNA she wants to replicate. She’ll even risk passing on Leonard’s short stature and lactose intolerance to her progeny if it means said progeny will inherit his brains.

The deal breaker?

No way will she take a chance that her child will favor string theory over loop quantum gravity.

Seriously. A girl has to draw the line somewhere.

So have we seen the last of Leslie? My instincts are saying no. There’s been some biology but definitely no chemistry between Leonard and Leslie. But there could be something between Leslie and Sheldon. Don’t you think? Is their constant sniping and animosity just a hint of what’s to come?

Leslie and Sheldon are identical character archetypes. He’s a Chief, she’s a Boss. Both highly competitive, both with an intense need to be right, all the time. So the big question is, will they be able to overlook theories of relativity long enough to let the laws of attraction take effect?

If I was one of the writers for this show, that’s the direction I’d take. It means Leonard would need a certain amount of consoling, and who better to do it than Penny?

Until next time,
Lee

Sunday Fun—Happy Father's Day and other stuff

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, espcially mine. Love you, Dad!

Yesterday I attended a workshop on character archetypes given by Susan Lyons. She based her workshop on The Complete Guide to Heroes & Heroines: Sixteen Master Archetypes by Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever and Sue Viders. If you’ve been following my posts on this blog, you’ll know this happens to be one of the few writing how-to books I use, and I highly recommend it!


This week the Harlelquin American Romance Athors are conducting an informal reader poll on our blog. If there are topics you'd like us to blog about—or not!—please drop by and let us know.

And while I have your attention, here’s a sneak peek at what’s happening this week on the Wet Noodle Posse Blog:

Monday—Terry McLaughlin tells us how to prepare a press kit
Tuesday—Jill Monroe talks about Author Talk
Wednesday—Mary Fechter discusses promotional loops
Thursday—Janet Mullany on how to cope with a "bad" cover
Friday - Q&A Day

Have a great week!

Lee

Smart is the new sexy . . .

That’s the tagline for the TV sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. I didn’t watch the regular season but now that it’s into reruns, I’m adding it to my summer viewing schedule. Here’s the plot summary:

Leonard and Sheldon are brilliant physicists, the kind of "beautiful minds" that understand how he universe works. But none of that genius helps them interact with people, especially women. All this begins to change when a free-spirited beauty named Penny moves in next door. Sheldon, Leonard's roommate, is quite content spending his nights playing Klingon Boggle with their socially dysfunctional friends, fellow CalTech scientists Wolowitz and Koothrappali. However, Leonard sees in Penny a whole new universe of possibilities...including love.

From what I’ve seen so far, the writers have done a superb job with character development, especially Leonard and Sheldon, the two physicists. Instead of serving up the stereotypical science nerd with a pocket protector and taped-together glasses, they’ve given us two very different characters. Polar opposites, in fact.

One of the archetypes described in The Complete Writer’s Guide to Heroes & Heroines: Sixteen Master Archetypes is the “professor.” For a show about science nerds, you might expect the writers to fall back on this archetype.

I’m glad they avoided the temptation, even though the costume designers couldn’t seem to resist. LOL!

Leonard is a “best friend” archetype—stable, supportive, tolerant, complacent, myopic and unassertive. Yes, that’s Leonard. To a tee.

Sheldon, believe it or not, is a “chief” archetype. Not how you usually see a science geek? Sheldon is goal oriented, decisive, responsible, stubborn, unsympathetic and dominating. What can I say? He's a know-it-all!

I haven’t yet seen enough of the show to figure out Penny, the gorgeous young woman across the hall, but I think she’s either a “waif” or a “spunky kid,” or possibly a layering of the two. What I do know is that Leonard has a serious crush on her. Too bad she already has a boyfriend.

It turns out that the writers of The Big Bang Theory have worked on some of my other favorite shows over the years (Gilmore Girls, Murphy Brown, Dharma and Greg, Caroline in the City, Mad About You, The Wonder Years, 3rd Rock from the Sun) so it’s no surprise that their latest efforts have caught my attention.

TBBT is on tonight, and I’ll be watching!

Lee

The Office’s Dwight Schrute—Hero or Villain?

I love this character! Or at least I love what the writers have done with him. Dwight has always had a villainous side, and it came to the forefront when he killed Angela’s cat at the beginning of this season. After Angela broke up with him, the writers have clearly had some fun playing with Dwight’s evil side.

If you visit Tami Cowden’s website, you’ll find links to brief descriptions of the hero and heroine archetypes outlined in The Complete Guide to Heroes & Heroines: Sixteen Master Archetypes by Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever and Sue Viders. You can also learn about villains—heroes/heroines gone bad.

As a hero, Dwight is a Professor. Here’s the blurb from Tami’s website: coolly analytical, he knows every answer. He’s logical, introverted, and inflexible, but genuine about his feelings. At work, he likes cold, hard facts, thank you very much, but he's also honest and faithful, and won’t let you down.

What do we get when the professor lets us see his dark side? An Evil Genius.

Again, from Tami’s website, a description of the Evil Genius: the malevolent mastermind, he loves to show off his superior intelligence. Intellectual inferiors are contemptible to him and that includes just about everyone. Elaborate puzzles and experiments are his trademark. Don’t let him pull your strings—the game is always rigged in his favor.

In last week’s episode, “Branch Wars,” Dwight kept saying he wants to do something to someone’s eyes, and Jim’s genuine concern helps us buy into Dwight’s craziness. He wants to use real bombs on the office in Utica because “it’ll be so bad ass” and “we will burn Utica to the ground.”

Oh, Dwight.

His unwavering devotion to the company and the boss and his contempt for anyone who tries to malign them have been blended to create a wonderfully complex comic character.

In this episode I also loved the subtle way the writers introduced conflict into Jim and Pam’s relationship in this episode. Jim is shut out of The Finer Things Club because he monopolizes the conversation by trying to be funny. His reluctance to confront Karen in Utica made it obvious that while he’s in love with Pam, he’s still attracted to Karen. But he did the right thing by ‘fessing up to Pam, who already knew anyway, and she took pity on him by letting him join TFTC. And we saw how well that went :) Pam’s last line of the episode was a silent, apologetic “sorry” to Toby.

I understand that lots of finer things clubs have sprung up on Facebook. I don’t do Facebook but if I did, I’d be tempted to check them out!

Back soon,
Lee